


between ancient tombs and open skies

by Rupzydaisy



Series: in any other world [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Prompt Day 1 - Present Day, archaeology AU, if you tip your head and squint this has The Mummy and Hooten and the Lady vibes, modern day AU, wondertrevweek2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 00:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: Diana stands to face the wall of rock separating them. He's behind it all, unaware of where she is. Like a madwoman, she might have sworn she could feel his presence behind there, a mirror to her. It isn’t rational but after all the scrapes they’ve been through, there is something between them. An awareness borne out of someone else holding your life in their hands, or reaching for the other and knowing that there’s safety at the end of it all with them."I'll be with you every step of the way, Steve. We'll do this together.""Wouldn't have it any other way.” He replies steadily down the walkie talkie and despite everything, she swears she can hear a smile in his voice.





	between ancient tombs and open skies

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 (Sunday, August 4th): Fanfic Prompt: Present Day  
For Wondertrevweek 2019

1.

She steps on something and the dry, cracked ground under her left boot gives way. Her stomach plummets and she turns around to see the mouth of the cave shudder. It begins to collapse, first in large chunks and then tumbling continuously. The ornate stonework had once been part of a magnificent building. It stood as a beacon at the top of a hill and had been eroded down, covered in vines and creeping plants. Time had claimed it back, slowly and gently, but now it faced total destruction as the large clods of rough stone crash to the ground and split. 

"Steve! Steve, can you hear me? Steve!" 

Dust billows out in thick clouds and Diana lurches towards the still falling rock. She keeps calling out for him, trying to see on which side of the entrance he had been knocked to. Her eyes water with all the dust in the air but she ignores it and coughs hoarsely between shouts, trying to clear her throat. The warm breeze picks up a little on the hilltop and blows the dusty air in great swirls. 

“Steve?”

As it slowly clears, she finds herself alone on the top of the rocky outcrop. The entrance to the site had completely collapsed, blocking access the network of passages used as shelter, storage, and further down as the final resting place for the honoured few. 

And to her horror, it had taken Steve along with it. 

Three days ago, they had set off before dawn from the nearest city to the dig site; a medieval settlement that once lay halfway between the mountains and the scrubland. It was a difficult drive along bumpy roads that transformed into dirt tracks the further they went. After around five hours, the road turned steep and melted into nothingness, leaving them to hike the impassable trail through the spindly trees and steep hills. It had taken a full day to set up camp, and then the two of them travelled back to the city to meet Sameer. He had been entrusted to collect further supplies and her equipment that the museum had shipped over. 

Steve had laughed and said that it was like a vacation, but he had listened to her explain the importance of the settlement and how those intrepid enough to cross the shrubland would later travel onwards to build the city they had flown into. Sameer, on the other hand, after helping to load up the truck, had slept the entire drive back to the dig site. After helping them up to the hilltop the drone scans had identified as their best bet, he had quickly excused himself to drive back to collect the third and final shipment so as not to sleep in a hammock or a tent only feet away from a cliff edge. Ancient underground storage of treasures and tombs, or no, he was adamant in claiming some creature comforts. 

The outdoors didn't bother Diana. She had chosen a job which now involved her travelling across the world in a way she had only dreamed of. Camping out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but her maps and tools was a small price to pay for it. With just the two of them left, she had begun some preliminary site surveys and when Steve offered to help, she had pointed him towards the carvings around the entrance of the cave. Although weather worn, she instructed that he take photographs and scratchings of them which could be scanned back to the museum while they waited for the more heavy-duty equipment to help them process the site. 

It was the most they could do without entering, the scans were sorely needed to help map a usable route. Diana had studied countless texts and secondary sources over the past year, including the diaries of a Victorian explorer who had fallen down one of the tunnels used to construct the cave system. It had taken her six days to find her way out, and she had dutifully recorded every wrong turn and dead end in the long abandoned, underground conglomerate of passages for those who might discover her body in the years to come. 

This knowledge lingers at the forefront of her mind as she claws at the stone, shifting it with her bare hands in an effort to find Steve. 

Eventually Diana’s arms tire, and she sinks to her knees hating herself for not being able to do enough. The accompanying realisation that he was trapped behind a thousand tons of ancient rock takes her breath away and she shakes her head, struggling to stand again. Her breathing turns ragged and she slumps there just trying to understand what was happening. 

She jerks when her walkie talkie crackles. A muffled garble of words spit out and she snatches it up from her belt to fiddle with the dials, trying to tune it up. 

"Diana? Diana, are you there?"

The sound clears instantaneously, and she tips sideways to rest against the rocks. 

"Steve, can you hear me?" 

His laugh is crackly down the line, but she sighs in relief, hand on her forehead and brings the small device up to her lips. 

"Are you hurt?"

"Nah, just a bit bruised. I kinda dived out of the way of the bigger chunks. I've tried to shift it, but there’s too much."

She stays silent for a long time, considering the options and the map that they've been studying for weeks which is burned into her brain. The whole tomb they’ve come to survey is set in the cliff, carved out painstakingly from the rock below with only a handful of viable shafts leading back up the surface.

"Diana...are you still there?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm here." 

"Good. I was beginning to think you'd decided to leave. It's a nice time for it, setting sun and all." 

There was a hint of lightness in his voice, still fighting against the resignation that had begun to set in. A couple hundred tons of rock could do that to a man. 

"You stay where you are, I'm going to call for help. Sameer only just left for the supply run into town. He’ll still be in range to pick up a call."

"Diana-"

"He can bring a digger, and pickaxes-"

"Diana-"

"We'll have you out in no time. I promise, Steve, don't worry."

"Diana, listen. You and I both know there's only one way out of here. And that's through the mountain. Anything else would take too long, or risk bringing more rock down."

She hangs her head at that, desperate to present another option.

Back in the tent, she has the complete diary of a Victorian explorer sitting in her satchel. One who had made the journey in and out of the ancient tomb. It's a testament of improbability and sheer dumb luck, and there's no guarantee Steve could follow the same path out. More than a full century had passed since pen had been put to paper. Rainstorms and minor earthquakes could have changed the swiss cheese-like passages to collapse ceilings or form sinkholes. 

"The overhang was massive and I've been pushed back further into the cave. I can see the rock formation that you read out from that little diary you’ve got. It would take days, maybe even a week to shift this rock. It could take days for Sameer to round up enough locals and guide them back up here."

Diana exhales loudly and slowly, using the long breath to try and calm her frazzled nerves. They'd come across obstacles during their partnership, little hiccups on trips like typhoons or murderous treasure looters, but nothing like this. 

She opens her mouth to argue again but he beat her to it, becoming more insistent. 

"I can do this. It'll be like an underground, crazy, corn maze."

"Crazy corn maze? No, listen-"

"What! You've never been to a corn maze? I'm taking you to a corn maze when we’re done here. Just you wait and see the corn, twelve feet high and-"

She growls out her exasperation. "You're the crazy one." 

Diana stands to face the wall of rock separating them. He's behind it all, unaware of where she is. Like a madwoman, she might have sworn she could feel his presence behind there, a mirror to her. It isn’t rational but after all the scrapes they’ve been through, there is something between them. An awareness borne out of someone else holding your life in their hands, or reaching for the other and knowing that there’s safety at the end of it all with them. 

"I'll be with you every step of the way, Steve. We'll do this together."

"Wouldn't have it any other way.” He replies steadily down the walkie talkie and despite everything, she swears she can hear a smile in his voice. 

2.

Ever since she was a young girl walking on old cobblestone streets and underneath seemingly decorative carved markings which had survived centuries of flood and fire Diana Prince had an interest in history. All around her on the island were ancient statues and time-drenched remnants that added fuel to the growing desire to learn more. But her current life of far flung archaeological discoveries and highbrow museum exhibition openings hadn't always been this way. 

She had started off as a young tour guide for the ruins outside of town, working at the weekends and in between piles of homework to learn from the university lecturers who brought their archaeology students for fieldwork over the autumn months. Fresh faced and weighed down by their tools, Diana watched as they were instructed on how to uncover mysteries hidden by the earth and restore what had been worn away by countless summer breezes. 

Being able to interpret Ancient Greek quicker than taking photos and sending them to the translators back in Athens, she had made a name for herself quickly. Then she became invaluable by helping to bridge the local knowledge and oral histories with their finds, and after loitering around for a few years she officially joined the group during her first year of university, visiting the island again under the tutelage of the same professors. 

After her doctorate, she returned to work at the local museum on her island, helping to restore a new statue that had been dredged up from the ocean. It was then that the plane had crashed out at sea, just beyond the shore. Being one of the only people on the sand that early in the morning, she had taken to the water and helped to bring the sole passenger of the light aircraft back to dry land. 

It turned out to be Steve, an American Air Force pilot on a mission, who had gone on to request her help in navigating to a specific spot many had assumed to be in the middle of the ocean. Despite the mayor's orders to help assist the stranger off the island as quickly as possible, Diana had taken charge of a small fishing boat and both of them landed on an island where the remains of a top secret technology he had been tasked with recovering had washed up. It seemed to be the end of their encounter and they exchanged goodbyes and went on their own way. 

Only, a favour for a favour had her calling him to help at her first museum exhibition opening in London, where one of the sponsors had been acting suspiciously and asking after what was a gilded sword purported to have once hung in a temple dedicated to Athena. A high speed car chase, three squads of armed police tasked with setting up a perimeter, and a makeshift trapeze later, one of Interpol's most wanted was safely in handcuffs and Steve's desk had received delivery of a letter of commendation for himself and a small thank you for the museum curator who assisted him. 

After that there was a flurry of exchanges. She called on him to assist with the transportation of a very valuable set of coins, and then he pulled her in on an assignment to get a contact of hers to forge a document to lure a high interest, reclusive target into the open. Eventually they became long distant colleagues, and when Steve decided to leave the Air Force at the same time Diana was offered an open-ended contract with the Louvre, she video called to ask if he would consider joining her team as a security expert. 

He answered from a campsite halfway up Kilimanjaro while taking a well-earned break and did exactly what she expected him to do; pulled a face when she first spoke to him about it, all the while being incredibly polite about declining it. 

"But won't it be...boring? I don't know if I can do a desk job, Diana, I'm not really the pen pusher, statue duster type."

"There's a reason the last team were disbanded, and why they reached out to me." She leaned back in her chair and flicked her pen. "The museum board think you'd be a good fit too. They read the newspapers."

"Oh really?" He grinned at her, amused by the idea that dusty old museum officials were interested in  _ him _ .

"They were also impressed by your previous assistance in Montenegro."

"Standing guard over the coins was dull. The only exciting bit was the sword fight. Who would’ve thunk a bunch of coins were that interesting?"

Diana shook her head, "The last team had difficulties in fending off mercenaries and looters trying their luck. You saw what it's like at the Chania site. Your experience and your contacts across the world would be invaluable."

It didn't take long for his grin to appear. "Travel to the back-end of beyond, right?"

"Possibly further," she shrugged. "A lot of these potential projects are bigger. They're talking about collaborations with smaller, specialised museums too. And being able to move collections to home countries and assist building them up. There's a whole range of museum partnerships and dig sites on the table, Perth, Muaro Jambi, Aratashen, Cumanacoa."

"So who's in this team?"

"At the moment...just me. But I've got free rein and good funding. You know I wouldn't be asking you if I didn't think it would work."

His grin cracked on his face to turn into a smile. "You know, Charlie's been looking for something to do. And Sameer has a knack for being able to get his hands on whatever's needed in the field. I'm sure we could rope him in to organise supplies as well."

"We?" 

She had smiled back, only slightly disappointed they were a few continents away. It would have been nice to celebrate in person. 

"As if I'd miss the chance for another Lisbon. When does it all kick off?"

"We can start immediately. How soon can you fly over?" Diana had asked, mindful of the good weather forecasts over the Aoukar basin.

"As soon as Etta can book me tickets." Suddenly the creases around his eyes deepened and he leaned forward into the camera, "I'm bringing her with me. No way am I having her reassigned to some jumped up little joystick jockey."

"I'd turn you around at the front door if you showed up without her," said Diana truthfully. 

It was a done deal at that, and then they fell back into their catch up where he said something silly and she laughed until her ribs hurt.

3.

Diana moves quickly across the centre of the ancient courtyard, pushing through the white tent flaps and heads straight to her desk, hauling out books and snagging scans and maps with her open hands. Somehow, she can only breathe shallowly, the air warm and thick under the day's sun, and the thought of tying open the tent flaps to let the breeze in crosses her mind but there's other things she needs to do first. Hurrying over the simple woven rug she was gifted three years ago from a dig on the edge of the Sahara, she lifts out a wrapped package from her battered suitcase and tucks it under her arm. 

After dumping everything else in her hands onto the table and gently setting down the wrapped package, she unclips the walkie talkie and sets that down too. She handles it carefully like the delicate lifeline it is; his is in her hands, quite literally. 

Diana swallows nervously and steels herself. “Okay Steve. Tell me, what do you have with you?” 

“I’ve got my walkie talkie, and my bag. My jacket’s under the rocks though. I liked that jacket.” He pauses, assessing what else he’s got. “Luckily, I didn’t unpack from the trek up here. I’ve still got my torch, pen knife, maps of the local area although they're not much help now...notepad, charcoal, phone, wallet, and gun.” 

As he rattled off his list, she continued to set up her workstation, unrolling the satellite scans and the superimposed sketches of probable passageways. Then she unwraps the diary out of the cloth protecting it. Diana’s hands pause over the dry pages and the scrawled pencil where Gertrude Trill had written down her memories by candlelight, each line terse but informative, and potentially her last as she travelled through the ancient passageways. 

“Have you found Trill’s rockfall?”

“Yeah, I see the route she took. She carved her initials in the rock here, like a delinquent teenager. I’m taking a picture for you.”

Diana smirks at his mock horror, “Okay Steve, I’ve got a route for you. You can follow the same path. Left at the rockfall and then onwards until the ceiling lowers and the passageway narrows. From there, it’s not the first turning but the second.” 

She runs her hands over the printed map that she had worked on back at the museum. All the preliminary drone surveys they had managed to carry out were compiled into it, along with data from speculative visits by a local museum group in the eighties. It was meagre data, she knew it wouldn’t give much information about what was underneath the surface, but it could still help them alongside Trill’s narrative. 

“Alright.” Steve replies resolutely as he sets off. “Hey, do you think she’s carved her name at every turning?”

4.

"This a bit weird,” comments Steve. 

Diana followed his path on a speculative map she had hastily drawn up. He had travelled inwards and downwards, and was approaching the first established room as the corridor came to an end. Trill had given some information in her diary too, and it had been one of the things that had drawn her to put this site at the top of her list. 

"No it's not, we’ve got primary accounts of their elaborate welcoming traditions. They wanted to entice people to trade with them or to stay and help them build more. Anyway, you should see an altar at the far side of the room. Behind it is another smaller doorway leading onto the next set of tunnels, you can keep following Trill’s route right through to the tombs."

"It's not that. It's the carvings in the room. They're a bit…"

"Yes?"

He coughs and she can tell that he was trying to compose himself. "Well, let's just say I don't think everyone would get onboard with this kind of welcome. Welcomes, I should say. Either of them."

Diana looks away from the maps and stares off into space. "Oh, I see. There are different carvings, some erotic and some violent?"

"Yeah."

"I told you this when we were driving. The settlers wanted to show they were highly capable of defence but equally open to welcoming other important groups though marriage. The upper levels of the cave system are more likely to have been used more regularly, as shelter from bad weather. Although, if they’re that highly decorated then maybe they served other purposes, perhaps winter festivals or larger feasts." 

Now distracted, she had lost the panic in her voice and reverted to her lecturing tone and Steve rummaged through his bag to fish out the camera again. "Lovers and fighters? I guess that makes sense."

"Think of it like a billboard. But more permanent. Are you going to-" 

"Yeah, I'm taking pictures." He spoke around the torch between his teeth. 

5.

They had become good friends, but like all good friends they argued. 

Actually, in his opinion, they argued a little too well.

It happened because of Diana’s tendency to ignore practicalities for the sake of her work or for the people it might benefit. He preferred not to walk into enemy fire for the sake of a few trinkets. There were risks to be taken, but not when the odds were tipped grossly out of her favour. He knew more than most, that luck served no one, and that sometimes it was just wits, sheer determination, and a weapon that could swing a bad situation into a passable we-can-survive-this sort of one. 

So yeah, they argued. Etta kept score at home, and Charlie was always delighted to congratulate Diana on her wins. It all worked, just as long as they got back safe. And he’d taken on that job to make it a certainty. 

Steve had immediately admired her for her dedication to her work. Her thinking being that with every brushstroke removing dirt from the past and every story uncovered meant that she was closer to finding a deeper truth about humanity. It was a certain way of seeing the world, from all the tombs and rubble and ancient artefacts, they all had one thing in common; people. 

He watched the way she spoke about her projects. The spark in her eyes flared up. Seized by the drive to understand. More and more, he could see it in himself too, that the world didn't have to be complete chaos, that it could really be as simple as life, love, and happiness. That people living in centuries long gone wanted the very same things as people today. 

They had been in Brussels taking some downtime between flights. Etta had booked a layover of two days before they had to return the museum to present the findings. The break had given them a chance to decompress after the tumultuous adventures of the past three weeks. They had been hired privately to recover an antique Babylonian sceptre from a compound on the outskirts of Fez. It had passed through private hands ever since its theft in the thirties and had rumours of it surfaced again, hinting that a former army commander had acquired it for his personal vault. 

Recovering stolen artefacts wasn’t what they normally did but Diana’s eyes had hardened the moment she had been asked, and that was that. It had almost been easy. Almost. 

They had accidentally set an alarm off on the perimeter and were hauled in by security guards who weren’t interested in their flimsy excuse of being tourists lost off the beaten track. He hadn’t thrown the first punch, that was all her, especially when she could see into the vault and the piles of stolen treasures hoarded away by a single greedy man. 

Steve had been surprised by the sudden turn of events, and still wondered how on earth she had managed to drop two of the guards before being cracked on the head by a third. It hadn’t stopped her for long, and despite throwing the next few punches a little more wider than he’d liked, she had sent the third guard like a sack of potatoes. Within the kerfuffle, he had shaken off the last two guards and quickly rounded up the remaining ones alerted by the noise before heading off to call in a favour from a local police commissioner. 

Help came quickly, and the police carted off the guards while Diane supervised packing up the small treasure trove of artefacts as best they could, having negotiated with their benefactor for a year’s loan of the artefacts they found. Charlie had picked them up and promised to run them back to the museum in his fastest truck. They had taken a quicker route homewards and Steve was pleased that the Belgian air was cold and the last of the sand had been laundered out of his clothes. 

It still meant that he was sporting a split lip, and she had a bruise slowly greening at her hairline. But all in all, he thought that they had gotten off lightly. It could have been much worse for them and he wasn’t sure what he would have done if that happened. 

The Grand Place was bathed in gold, lights twinkling from the streetlamps and sconces around the old buildings and on the slick cobblestones underfoot. It cast dramatic shadows up the sides, only to be broken by window boxes of flowers waiting to bloom again in the morning light. They had decided to stretch their legs, and the jet lag had them out walking very late, with only a few other people crossing the square towards their homes and beds. 

"Come on, you can't believe it!" He shook his head in the face of her stoic expression. 

Her eyes flicked away from the hanging baskets on the old Guildhall to throw him a confounded look. "Yes, of course I do." 

"Atlantis? Really?"

"There's always a little myth in the truth. There's theories too. A coastal city that succumbed to a tidal wave. An earthquake under the ocean that disturbed the plates and it went under."

He shook his head again, ignoring the way she was frowning at him. "But no one knows where. How can you have this legend, but no one knows where? Doesn’t it seem a bit...of a fairy tale." 

Diana slipped her arm out of his, "If you think like that, you will never find anything, Steve. You’ll just be stuck, without any...any realisation of anything." 

He grabbed hold of her hand and tugged lightly so that she wouldn't march off but instead of leaving him there, she turned around and continued to speak, raising her voice, "Everything has a history. Everything leaves a mark behind it. All our cities are built on the ruins of something. If we're lucky, we know where it comes from, and my job means I’m luckier than most because I get to find out about the mysteries and bring them back to the people they belong to." 

He opened his mouth and shut it, struggling to find a way to respond. It hadn’t quite been what he’d meant, and his silence over the last few days had put her on edge. 

"It's not just a job to me. If you find it funny, then we don't have to work together. I asked you to come, because-"

"-Sorry" He cut in quickly, before things took a turn for the worse. "I didn't mean it like that."

She looked back at him for what felt like an age and then exhaled sharply. "I know."

"It's just sometimes, to me, a rock is a rock." 

"I know you didn’t want to get involved in this job, but I couldn’t leave those things there. So much has been looted, so many things have been lost, and then there are people like him who take whatever’s left and sell them on for a price. It’s not right, Steve."

"I'm not going to argue with that." He conceded, shrugging his shoulders. "I like it when you call."

"Because if you don't..." She paused, and the lines around her eyes crinkled again to match her tired frown. "There are bigger trips lined up, with potentially more valuable finds than a stack of coins or old texts, and I need someone I can trust.”

"Valuable finds, like what?"

"Like the panels from the Amber Room in Montevideo. We've been tipped off that they may have been smuggled out of Europe during the war and flown into South America."

"Sounds like an adventure to me. But really, you name it, I'm there." He squeezed her hand lightly, "Blackbeard's beard, or sunken treasure, or even a big old normal rock that you think is important. I'll be there."

Her face was close to his and she seemed a little stunned, until her gaze dropped down from his eyes to his lips. Despite the cold, his fingers tingled and he was sure his ears were red, but not from the sunburn.

The seconds stretched out, unspooling from the natural ticking of time. Steve realised he was holding his breath. Diana shifted her weight imperceptibly from one foot to another, and leaned forward and then back again, arms pressing close to his. She smiled back and it was as warm and welcoming as it had ever been. 

When he exhaled, it was like a spell breaking. Time pushed on and that moment was trapped back in the past. He doesn't think about it often, that's not in his nature, but when he does, Steve wonders if there was something other than his breath that was lost to that gap between the two of them in the middle of the empty square in Brussels. 

"Maybe Atlantis is real, maybe it isn't." Steve said, watching her soft lips curve down again as she slipped her arm back into his. "But if it is, I'd put my money on you finding it."

6.

"Just stick to the sides in this room, Steve. The preliminary drone scans showed that the centre of it is-"

"Yeah, I remember, a giant hole and probably tricked up seven ways to hell. It was one of the only interesting parts of that diary and your lecture on the plane. So much for these people being welcoming, you wouldn't be able to do much marrying if you were crushed." He hears himself say the words and then regrets it. His ears still ring with the sound of the falling rock, deadly and deafening. 

"Most of the mechanisms won’t be working, but you should still stick to the lines that the builders used. Trill included whole passages in her diary about some of the security they had built into this part of the tomb, being too close to the burial chamber."

Steve could recall a few of those one with a bit more clarity, and Trill had narrowly escaped further tunnel collapses. “Yellow brick road, got it."

"Actually...they're  _ probably _ not working, but I bet enough of them have worn through their safety catches or the weights have disintegrated," Diana corrects herself. "Just like the trick stone at the entrance. Once we send a full team in to do scans, we'll have a better picture."

"So...it's more, the floor is lava."

"It’s nowhere near that deep, Steve."

"You've taught at colleges and you've never seen your students play the game?" Despite the crackle of static, he's sure his voice carries enough incredulity. "Add it to the list."

His steps echoed noisily and the bright torchlight only cuts a beam of white light as he sweeps it from side to side, taking care to keep his feet within the path laid out hundreds of years ago. He knows how much of an honour it is, to be the first one down here in decades, even as an unexpected explorer. Even with the oppressive darkness and having to continuously push back at the feeling of panic and claustrophobia, he knows for certain that if the tables were turned and it was his foot to accidently trigger the rockfall, Diana would use every single moment to her advantage. 

The thought lingers in his mind, insistent and immovable. It would be easy to stray a little further along the passageway jutting out of the room, into other hidden spaces and make more intentional discoveries. If she were here, she would do what she could to recover items. Diana didn't see them as dusty books or broken bits of stone, they were fabled truths buried under centuries which could bring real understanding. He edges closer, carefully moving to take each step. 

"Do you want me to make a detour." Steve offers, turning his head down the dark tunnel and his feet take him forward, straying away from their agreed path. The ease of it feels like a relief, as though his entrapment wasn’t a complete waste of time. Discovering a new find would somehow help give the whole terrifying experience some sort of purpose, rather than feeling like he was stumbling around dozens of feet underground looking for a way out. 

"No." He pauses, surprised at how quickly she turns him down, but he knows there's a lie hidden in there somewhere. 

His surprise is short lived and he suddenly staggers back. A loud blast echoes from the walkie talkie and his voice cracks over the continuing sound, "Uh-actually I think things are working fine! The ceiling's coming down!"

Steve stumbles backwards into the larger room until he hits the wall and watches the large stones fall loudly and stack on top of each other right until the paved line where the floor sloped upwards. The pile grows higher and higher until they skitter down and threaten to crush him. The middle of the room trembles again and a low rumble emanates from the corridor he had walked through as it comes down in a mind-numbingly loud crash. Dust fills the air until it’s like he’s looking through fog, and it’s only a hand on the wall behind him that keeps him rooted. Although his heart thumps louder and his blood runs cold, the prickle at the base of his neck screams at him to  _ get out! _

He quickly edges his way around, feet following the horizontally paved stones. Trill's route had now been snatched away, and he was suddenly left with an exit that was quickly disappearing as the bulk of stones continued to grow wider in the centre of the room, threatening to block him off completely. 

"Left! I'm going left!" He yells and jams the walkie talkie back onto his belt before diving through the ever-shrinking hole and into the narrow passageway behind. 

In his haste, he catches himself against the wall sideways and it scrapes against his shoulder when he loses his balance. The stone is cold and rough against his back and the sound behind him is deafening. The whole corridor shakes and then falls into complete darkness. Three heartbeats later he gathers his thoughts enough to fumble for his torch and shines it in the space he came through. He looks at the fist-sized hole as the last of the stones clattered down at the altar. 

"I went left." Steve says redundantly into his walkie talkie. “Diana, I can’t go back. I can’t follow Trill’s route.”

He rises slowly to his feet, unsteady. His shoulder throbs where he bashed it and the jarring pain dancing down the nerve was suddenly a welcome distraction. "I guess I'm in uncharted territory now."

He turns around, trying to see if there was any indicator, any hint on the dry, beige walls, but there wasn't. 

"Diana? Which way should I go?"

"I'm looking…" He could hear rustling, and the sound of his own ragged breath. The walls seemed to be smaller here, the corridor narrower than the ones before. It had been easier when they were following the set path, but now he felt untethered, adrift in the pitch-black bowels of the earth. People had real, rational fears about being trapped in the dark, in small tight spaces, of being slowly constricted and squashed. For him, that wasn’t the real problem, but the fear of being lost and dying in the dark wasn’t something he could wholly ignore. 

He slides his finger off the walkie talkie, cutting the channel for a moment, and allows himself to swear and scream his frustration into the darkness. The shadows absorb the sound instantly. 

"Anything?" He asks after hunches over, swallowing in huge gulps of stale, dust filled air to compose himself. 

"No. Our surface scans haven't gone that deep, and I can't see anything in the archived materials for a passage behind that room. You’re going to have to choose, and use the charcoal to keep track." 

He hears the reluctance in her voice, imagines the frown creasing her forehead. 

"And listen, Sameer is going to reach the city before nightfall, so it means he’ll be able to come back by tomorrow afternoon with help." 

Steve sighs to himself and flicks his torch light at his two options. Identical passages melting into pitch black shadows. One leading left, and the other leading right. “Pick a path, Trevor, any path.” 

7.

It was after the second time she’d called on him, he came to Lisbon and went after two weeks and that was that. Her team had flown out to Beijing almost a month afterwards, and were looking to head to the outskirts of the city to help assist a dig with scanning equipment loaned from her university. Diana had spent most of the flight over deleting emails sent through from an interested French millionaire who was well known to have friends with sticky fingers. He had originally offered to be a sponsor, but she had turned him down in lieu of the Sackler museum. 

Diana had begun her impromptu lecture, having been requested by several students helping out on the project to present a little on what the team planned on doing in the city. They scattered themselves across the room, filling the seats along the front rows and towards the middle, but she only noticed him towards the end of the talk when he shifted in the very back row of the room and the strong afternoon sunshine reflected off his jacket. It threw her a little because she hadn’t seen him until then, and she tripped over her words a little before turning back to screen and giving her attention back to the young, eager faces closer to the front of the room. 

His presence was completely unexpected, because she hadn’t called him herself. She’d have a hurried conversation with Etta two weeks later who would confess that she had mentioned to him that Diana was looking for help. He’d come on his own volition after sending a vague message via her assistant at the museum. 

But in that moment, all she knew was that Steve had been sitting at the back of the room for a full two and a half hours, looking a little jet lagged and rumpled, but listening to her talk. 

When her presentation was over, he still sat there while the crowd of students and staff filed out of the room slowly, waiting patiently as they asked their follow up questions on her slides. There had been an immediate buzz as soon as she arrived at the museum and everyone was eager to know about the information she might bring back from her new project. 

"Are you always this popular?" He smiled warmly when he finally traipsed down the stairs and she returned it. 

They hadn't seen each other for nearly three months, but it the time away hadn’t eroded the familiarity they'd managed to build up in London. Half-hanging out of a window and relying on the other to prevent an eleven-story drop would do that to a burgeoning friendship. 

"Sometimes." She replied, although her name had been drawing larger and larger crowds over the last few months. "My work's gained a higher profile recently, in certain museum circles."

Steve gave an appreciative nod, knowing exactly which headlines could be credited to that because his name was right beside hers in the black newsprint. They had turned many heads and the museum board eventually warmed up to the idea of a briefly-famous curator. 

"That was an interesting lecture, Dr Prince." 

She nodded back politely. "I didn't expect to see you here."

He slouched back, heels knocking against the table leg. "I heard that you were in the market for some additional security."

She pursed her lips and nodded again, quite happy to refuse the museum the meagre two security guards they were able to source for her. The offer, while genuine, wasn't nearly enough to help guard twenty-four carat relics from a man who thought he could bribe her into looking the other way while they were transported to the national museum. 

"I'm on loan for this project, but I could argue the case for a specialist, if you're interested?"

"I'm not cheap." He said as he yawned widely. "Especially if Monsieur Reinhardt is looking to nab himself a pair of fancy gold earrings."

She tipped her head and eyed him. "And there I was, thinking you were paying attention. My apologies, Steve Trevor, I stand corrected."

"Huh?" He rubbed at his watery eyes, trying to brush the tiredness out of them. 

"You've proved that human beings can sleep with their eyes open."

"Oh, that. Right." He shook his head and gestured at the final slide on her presentation with an artist's sketch of her upcoming find. "Well, if you squint they look like earrings."

Diana shut down her laptop and packed up her paperwork before instructing his drooping figure. "We leave tomorrow morning, if you're ready."

"I will be." Steve slid off the table and straightened up. "I just have to power through the jet lag."

She watched the projector power down with a whir and then headed to the door, pausing as her heels clacked onto the tiles in the corridor. "If you eat at normal mealtimes, it'll help. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch."

"I know, I know. It's the middle of the night, technically because I flew from Lima." He grumbled to himself before slouching towards her to take her pile of booklets and papers into his arms. It was then that his sleep deprived brain churned out another half-formed thought which surprised her more than it did him. "This would be a date if it was anyone other than you."

8.

"And that's the last of my water."

"You're more than halfway there now." Diana flips over a map and digs out one of their surface scans, dragging a finger over the topology rings. "That last passage looped back and cut across. I think you’re back on track now."

"So, I could do it without any more water?"

She's hesitant to reply to that. "Do you have any food?"

He scoffs, "Yeah, I filled my satchel with those chocolate chip energy bars. I'm looking forward to  _ that dinner _ ."

Diana cast her eye over the box and the pile of solely orange wrappers inside. "You took of  _ all _ them?"

"Yeah!" 

"I could actually do with an ice cream." He says a few minutes later, too wistful to be teasing. 

It was him who had introduced her to proper gelato in the winding streets of Venice. It seemed only fair to be able to return the favour. "I'll buy you one when you find your way out." 

There's a long silence before he speaks again, and she briefly wonders if she was too flippant with her answer. "You will?"

"It's a deal."

"Is it now?" He lets out a crackly chuckle, "You might have to go back on your word. I could be down here for the rest of my days. God knows I've cheated death a few to many times."

Her heart sinks when she hears the resignation in his voice, and she can’t help herself in arguing back. "Steve Trevor, a deal if a promise, and a promise is unbreakable. So yes, I'll buy you as many ice creams as you want, because I'm going to get you out of there."

She feels a fool for wanting to cross her fingers and toes and wish on anything at all. Luck wasn’t something that could be bartered or bought, but if it could have, she’d have paid any price to know that they were on the right track. 

9.

Four more hours later his legs are tired and he's fed up of the pervasive smell of dust and dirt. His hands are scratched from stumbling on loosely compacted dirt and catching himself on the rough walls, and no matter how much he blinks, his eyes are dry. They had thought he had found Trill’s path again, and he had sworn he saw a small white arrow leading him onwards, but that had been hours ago and he was beginning to doubt himself. 

"You need to rest. You've been walking for nearly eleven hours," says Diana, the voice of reason. 

"I’m just going a bit further. I'm almost at the next room, I can see it." 

She sighs heavily down the line. They're both as stubborn as each other, which tends to be fine when they were working towards the same thing, but sometimes even then they would disagree and it results in hours or days of just plain, obstinate bickering. 

He steps into the next room and it's immediately cooler, as if there's a breeze. He shines the torch light over every inch, hoping that there's a nook or cranny leading to the outside world. Every corner of the room brightens under the torch light, showing him another sealed box and he puts it down to another trick of the imagination. 

"I'm here. I'm sitting down, you happy?"

"Very." 

He parks himself on the floor and leans his back up against the wall which crumbles a little against him. Setting the torch upright on the floor to cast gloomy shadows around him, he shifts his bag onto his lap and digs around to find the chocolate chip bars. 

"Do you think three or four counts as a meal?" He asks her while pulling out a fistful of snack bars and opening the first. 

"Five."

"Do you me to eat them _ all _ ?" She laughs at that, the brittle tension loosened again and he was suddenly very glad. "Because I can. I mean, I was going to save one for you, but I don't have to."

"Eat. Rest. I'm rereading the diary, there might be a clue or a different path."

Steve lets the silence fill up the room again and then brags that he's eating another chocolate chip bar. He shivers as an almost imperceptible waft of cool air crosses the room. The fine hairs on his arm rise up and he groans to himself. It had been well over eight hours since the rockfall occurred and dusk would have fallen. If it hadn’t happened, he would have helped set up their camp properly, in preparation for an international team of archaeologists who’d be arriving to help with the explorations a week later. They would probably spend days walking around in circles and even more setting up their equipment to cover every square inch of a dig site. 

Normally after a team’s arrival, his role would vary depending on location. Sometimes he was kept busy helping with running important findings back to city airports or handing over to museum-arranged couriers. Other times, the digs were more unpredictable with looters lying in wait to steal any uncovered gold or silver from burial chambers and he’d spend sleepless nights watching over the site and making sure that Diana’s team was kept safe. 

“What is it?” She asks, worry leaking back into her voice when he groans again. 

"I'm cold.” Steve tells her, after finishing his fourth bar, relishing the ratio of chocolate chips. “I wish I was stuck down here with a jacket.” 

"Cold?" Diana mutters, more to herself than him. 

"Cold. Lost. Maybe sporting new cavities. These are really good, I get why you keep them away from the rest of the team." 

"Why would it be cold? Is there water nearby?"

Steve shoves the last bite of chocolate and oats into his mouth and rolls onto his knees. He reaches for the torch and begins to methodically search the narrow room. The wall is cooler closer to the floor and when he crouches down, fingertips pressing into the compacted dirt, it gives way and leaves a slight impression behind. 

“There’s water here.” 

He searches every inch of the room and finally finds a damper patch in the far corner of the room. Feeling a smidgen of hope, he gathers his stuff up to follow it outside, hunching over to rest his hand against the corresponding same path on the other side of the wall. He traces it down the passageway to the right and his mouth hangs open. If she was here, she’d laugh at him. 

“Trill found water on the sixth day, didn’t she?” 

“Yes, she did. Keep following it.” Diana urges, and he stands up a little taller and carries on into the darkness.

10.

“I don’t understand.” Diana’s voice is strained and fainter, “You should be out by now. Trill’s mentions she left the circle and arrow as the last etching on the wall.  _ After so long, I emerge into the dawn light. I never thought I would feel the sun again, that the earth would hold my bones while I clung to life. _ Did you pass any more rock falls? Anything that looked like a doorway?” 

Steve hadn’t, and it was making the sour tinge of panic trickle through his veins. He was so sure that he was almost out. He had followed the path Trill had taken, minus a few detours that the explorer had helpfully marked out with a handful more arrows on passages leading to dead ends. When the walls curved out to throw back more light, they teased his imagination and a trickle of hope returned because he thought that the exit was close. 

But each time it was only his eyes were playing tricks on him. Spots of light and colour flash before his eyes erratically and he kept turning to face them, only for them to disappear. There was a pervasive lack of light where the dimpled cave walls threw back the bright torchlight, yet past it, the encroaching darkness swallowed up every feature in the rock to wipe away the meagre notion of the world outside the tunnels. He had suffered it over the past ten hours with a certain level of stoicness that was beginning to falter. 

He chokes down the rising feeling of futility and shakes out his shoulders. “No, I’ve stuck to this main passage, after the last arrow.” 

“It should have been a shortcut. You should be out by now.”

_ Did we take a wrong turning somewhere?  _

Steve doesn’t give breath to the horror of the thought. Instead, he comes to a dead stop and tips the torch higher. 

He lets out a laugh, like a bubble of air escaping from the depths of the ocean she once fished him out of. It was the only thing he could do. 

“Diana, I think the tunnel’s getting lighter!” 

He picks up the pace, begins running out towards the opening. His boots slap against the compacted ground and kick up dust. Suddenly, it’s bright enough for him to not need the torch, and as he races out into the open he has to bring his hands up to shield his eyes from the brightness of the twilight. Although the sun had set long ago, the blanket of twinkling stars provided some light and he could see shapes under the navy-blue sky. 

“Steve, are you out?” 

The sound is clearer now, there’s hardly any crackle down the line. 

“Yes. Yes!” 

He grins to himself and breathes in the sweet, fresh air as deeply as he can. Turning around slowly, he takes in the new surroundings and his eyes burn with the return of colour, albeit in shades of blue and black and grey. He wipes his face down with the back of his hand, and then runs it through his hair, sending sprinkles of dirt onto his shoulders. 

When he looks up to the hilltop, he can see the top of their tent. A white flutter against the deepening blue of the night sky. “I can see you! I’m southwest ways. I’m hiking back up.” 

Clipping the walkie talkie back onto his belt, Steve hoists his bag back onto his shoulder and feels a surge of elation. Before he sets off, he lets it out in one loud whoop of joy, sending dozing birds nestling in the surrounding trees out up into the navy sky. Rolling his neck out, he lets his shoulders relax. As he begins to walk up, he takes his time, eyes flicking around to take in the small plants along the dirt path, ears attuned to every rustling, and relishing every second above the still, dark tunnels.

His heavy legs plod on up the steep incline. Journeying up, his relief sinks into his bones and brings with it a clarity. It was of a translucent sort that he'd felt only a handful of times in his life; after listening to his father’s advice and then deciding to join the Air Force, or after a certain gruelling flight and a narrow-miss had him waking in terror for a month afterwards, or after moving to London. These moments had been like giant boulders in the course of his life, shaping him as he slowly but surely chipped away at them or found himself buoyed up and drifting onwards, around them. 

Steve was sure there was another moment he could add to that list. 

11.

Diana paces back and forth, waiting for him to return. She knows she won't be able to rest until she sees him with her own eyes. When Steve jogs up the final slope, she turns and freezes completely unsure of herself for the very first time. But then she twists around to watch him pick up his speed, dust covered and exhausted. It takes her only a moment to find herself sprinting across the hilltop. Her cheekbone knocks against his face when she grabs his shoulders and hugs him. 

They both stagger a little with the impact and Steve has to lean back to get his balance back but she doesn't let go. Instead she presses close and wraps her arms around his waist, sucking in a deep breath to stop the burning feeling in her lungs. 

"Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, I'm good."

His voice is low and quiet, and Diana tips her head back to examine his face, as though she could figure out what he was thinking just by looking at him. Normally he’s easy to read, but there's something in his crystal blue eyes beyond the warmth she's become so familiar to and she can't pin it down to categorise it. She lets the puzzling thought drift away, and slowly, reluctantly, allows her arms to slip loose from his waist. Steve shuffles on the spot and clears his throat nervously before pulling his satchel around and flipping open the cover. 

"I, um...brought something from the gift shop." 

Steve gently pulls out a fragile looking bound book, as thick as a man's torso. He holds the aged and crinkled binding in his palms for her to gawk at.

"You did  _ what _ ?" She asks once she can wrap her brain around the idea of what he had done. 

“It’s a joke, Diana.” 

Goosebumps raised up on her arms and then her stomach lurched at the realisation. " _ This _ was why the ceiling came down, isn't it? You took...a book." 

"The ceiling was coming down any way, I think I hit a pressure plate.  _ This _ was in the room behind it. I took a wrong turn, kinda." 

His bravado wilted as she planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Okay so it was on purpose. We both knew there was a dead end from Trill’s diary. This was what she meant by  _ heart of the mountain. _ Only she didn’t want to take it with her because she wasn’t sure she’d make it out."

"You could have  _ died _ !" 

Her reprimand wasn't as harsh as it could have been, not when her eyes darted from his face to the book in his hands. She knew he was aware of it because the mischievous twinkle that accompanied more of his bolder decisions now glinted in his eyes despite rearranging his features into a more sombre expression. 

She gently plucked it out of his hands and walked back into the tent to place it inside one of the spare wooden boxes they had brought with them to store any finds. Her fingers snapped the clasps shut tight and her heart inexplicably fizzes up again while the frothy anger that had churned up by his recklessness receded. Its shadowy form compresses until she recognises the core of it for the fear it really is. 

It doesn't come as a surprise, but Diana has to pause for a second to think. Resting her hands on the top of the wooden box, her heart flutters when she hears Steve following her into the tent. She's so used to him making himself at home; sitting with his feet slung over the side of the armchair in her office or shooting her a lazy grin during his rounds on watch at dig sites. His footsteps are slow, as though he's reluctant to step closer and it makes her feel guilty for being angry at him. The high tide of panic that had been building steadily over the past twelve hours had retreated but it had left behind a lingering prickle of fear that he had put himself in danger. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but it could have been the last. 

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" 

She asks without turning back, grappling with the swirling feeling of anticipation in her stomach. Her nerves had been well and thoroughly jangled. Despite it, with every passing moment a warming certainty was taking hold of her from her fingertips to her toes and brought a new clarity along with it. 

"Nothing apart from a few scratches. I thought you'd be more pleased to see me." 

"No, I am, Steve. I'm relieved. I-"

"I thought you'd be happy...about the book. You’ve got your big find, without your team even putting boots on the ground. I'm guessing, once you've figured out the translation you'll have enough to fill a library or two."

Diana turns around to face him, and the words fly out of her mouth before she even realises she's voiced them. "Why did you risk it? I'd rather you here than the book!"

A blinding smile floods back onto his face. His trepidation disappears under her insistent tone and he steps until he’s right there in front of her, just as she’d been wishing. "Good. I was starting to think you were angry about the chocolate chip bars."

Her heartbeat thrums inside her ears and she can smell the ancient dust that's permeated his shirt and settled on his skin and in his hair. The space inside the tent suddenly feels smaller, like the world has shrunk down. She's aware that she's stepping into uncharted territory but Steve's solid presence is unwavering and it doesn't feel like a misstep. It never has with him. 

"You can keep the snack bars. I've had other important things to think about."

Diana reaches her hand out to brush her fingers lightly against his cheek and his hand rises up to cover it. His other hand lightly trails a tendril of her hair, before drawing a feather light line along her jawline. It sends a shiver of pleasure down her neck and she draws herself closer to him. 

The crinkles around his eyes deepen. "What things have you been thinking about?" 

"Mostly that you needed to make it out of the tunnels in one piece." He brushes a finger across her bottom lip as she tips her head, leaning towards him and whispers, "And that you were mad to risk your life for an artefact, no matter how valuable it may have been."

He chuckles again, and the sound vibrates into her collarbones and sinks deep past her ribs. "But partly, I've been asking why I haven't done this before."

She leans closer to kiss him and the gap between them vanished. When they eventually break apart, cheeks flushed and breathing heavily, she feels lighter than ever. 

"I should get trapped underground more often." Steve quips. 

"Don't you dare." She draws him into another deeper kiss until he pulls away to catch his breath and brushes her curls out of her face. 

"Okay, I won't." 

Diana sighs softly before twining her arms around his shoulders and leaning in to kiss him again, thinking she could stay there forever. For once, the whole world stops turning and she puts aside her books and maps, leaves the ancient book for the morning. They spend the rest of the night on a blanket curled up beside each other underneath the stars, pointing out pinpricks of light and joining up the vast space between the infinite golden lights and reminiscing on the small steps that brought the two of them together.

Tucked under his arm, Diana hears Steve mumble something into her hair just as he drops off to sleep. "Hey, Diana. You owe me an ice cream."

Despite her own tiredness, her lips curve in a sleepy smile at the sound of her promise to him.

"It's a date." 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Gertrude Trill isn’t a real person, when looking up a bunch of Victorian era explorers, Gertrude Bell was and lead a pretty interesting life.


End file.
